Arnold Mindell uses 'flirt' to mean some hint, some impulse, some piece of knowing beneath (or pervading) what he so usefully calls 'consensual reality'. Sometimes he refers to what 'bugs' us. Annoying thoughts or feelings or impulses that zig zag around on the periphery and won't sit politely like logic does.

Here's a little example of the power of the Mindell-ian flirt:

'Innerwork Tip 3: Don’t Throw Out Your Problem… Yet! A man who tried to get rid of a mouse, threw it in a little fire outside the house. The mouse caught on fire, but ran back into the house and burned it down. The moral of the story (for us) is; find out what bugs you. But don’t throw it out! Use its nature in some useful way for yourself and others.'

He has a process to turn a symptom into a resource. You know how, if you have a neck ache, all you want is for it to stop - the impulse to suppress or escape. The symptom is nudging you and if you stop and listen and explore there can be a whole new approach, new insights and increased energy released to you. Mindell calls this being ecological and I like it. He encourages people to explore their 'edges' or their current 'edge'. To find potential in the inconsequential and the rejected. You can read some of his refreshingly oblique processes here.

Yesterday I missed an opportunity. And I choose not to let the little flirt go to waste. I do my best to harvest in the impulse in a different modality:

small red sketched skullthere I was on the upescalator on the move, hurrying on to meet my obligationto keep on the move to get out of the tubeand onto the train whenI felt an urgebut my hand did not obeyI felt an urgebut my hand did not obeyand then sawa little skull on a sticky label a little red skullwith a bared teeth grin stuck to the lightlike a fairground lantern at the level of my kneelittle gnasher trying to say to meremember insurrectioneach moment there is no escape the hand that picked up the penput this hereto make you recalculatewhat lateness is really all about

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Performer and theatremaker Peta Lily has been taking photographs for the last five years. Her aesthetic has been to use her iPhone camera to capture the world close up and with an immediacy that is both surprising and moving.